I’m not an ear, nose, and throat specialist, but I play one in my dreams. Which is why I can say with confidence that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has a defective olfactory bulb. Indeed, the guy can’t smell a rat when it’s right in front of him.

On Thursday, Kavanaugh, who’s responsible for applications that come from the Sixth Circuit, which includes Michigan, denied without comment an emergency application from Americans for Citizen Voting to place on the Great Lakes State’s ballot a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship for registering to vote in Michigan. Given the American people’s overwhelming bipartisan desire for photo ID and proof of citizenship, this ballot initiative would’ve likely been a slam-dunk on November 3, and it might well have started an election-integrity avalanche among the other states without such voting protections. But it won’t be on the ballot in Michigan, thanks to the guy whose judicial bacon was once single-handedly saved by the late Lindsey Graham.

It’d be one thing if Kavanaugh had explained his reasoning, but he apparently didn’t think the plaintiff — or the people of Michigan — deserved it. Thus, Kavanaugh allowed a ballot initiative that needed 446,198 petition signatures and collected more than 700,000 to be scuttled by cheating, foot-dragging, anti-democratic leftists like current Secretary of State and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson.

The ruling in Michigan represents merely the latest in what might be called The Ballot Wars — that is, the battle between Democrats and Republicans to determine whether cheating in elections should be easy or hard.

At stake in November is control of the House of Representatives — and therefore control of the last two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Will Trump be able to run through the finish line on January 20, 2029, or will he and his lieutenants spend the last two years of his presidency being impeached and otherwise hauled before Democrat-controlled kangaroo courts? (If you’re one of those folks who only votes when Trump is on the ballot, understand this: Trump is most definitely on the ballot on November 3.)

Trump himself certainly knows what’s at stake, and he’s clearly learned the lessons of the 2018 midterms — which is why his administration is working, even at this late hour, to keep the Democrats from flooding enough congressional districts with mail-in ballots and thereby stealing just enough House races. As the Appropriated Press reports, “Statewide mail voting for this year’s midterm elections kicked off Friday amid a churning legal battle over President Donald Trump’s attempts to limit the practice and mounting concern over Postal Service changes that some state officials blame for a rise in rejected ballots. The developments have created a sense of uncertainty about a popular voting method used by one-third of the nation’s voters.”

Mail-in voting has indeed become popular — among Democrats. And for good reason: Bulk-mail balloting make it a lot easier to cheat, especially in Democrat-controlled states that have swing congressional districts. As the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission report stressed way back in 2005, “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Ballot harvesting? Groovy. Citizenship verification? Who needs it? Signature verification? That’s for suckers.

The Trump administration’s mail-in ballot battle is now back at the Supreme Court, even if the crux of the argument isn’t first and foremost before the court.

Still, if the Trump administration can create “a sense of uncertainty” among would-be cheaters, that’s a good thing. And making it known that officials will be watching things closely is also a good thing. As The Federalist reports, “Last month, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon announced her office will be deploying 1,000 election monitors at polling sites throughout the country in November’s midterm elections. A Department of Justice official tells The Federalist that the monitoring effort could be the largest in DOJ history.”

Dhillon, who came to her current role from California, no doubt knows a thing or two about electoral malfeasance. As Dhillon herself put it:

I’ve been a volunteer and private election lawyer in prior years and some of these jurisdictions are jurisdictions where I know I’ve got personal knowledge of there being problems in the past. So I think it should be a welcome sign in all jurisdictions that we have an eye on things. … The more eyes we have on elections, in my opinion, the better because the more people will be confident in those elections. We all want that as Americans.

Unfortunately, not all Americans want fair and honest and reliable elections. And so, Michigan will be a heavy lift for Republicans, even with a rotten Muslim Socialist Senate candidate polluting the ballot.

Thursday, though, was a bad day in court for the GOP. While Kavanaugh’s abdication will deny Michiganders free and fair future elections, another deleterious court decision will deny Missourians the right to have their elected representatives draw their congressional districts as they see fit — you know, like they do in Virginia. The Show Me State’s Supreme Court unanimously blocked a new congressional map whose districts were drawn by the state’s majority Republican Party, ruling that the state’s voters must first approve the map via a statewide referendum.

Fair enough. But why can’t leftist judges ever act with such integrity?

That’s a rhetorical question.